Napier Winery Annual Harvest Day competition on Saturday!

Saturday morning dawned bright blue and hot – as is the norm in the Winelands this time of year! We donned our hats and packed our sunscreen and set off for the Napier Winery Annual Harvest Day Festival outside Wellington. Their Harvest Day theme was Soccer World Cup – as there are less than 95 days left to kick-off.

On arrival, we were handed our nametags, with our names and the country we were representing. I always thought Spain was a good place to be! We met our other team members and after a French (continental) breakfast of coffee and croissants with different condiments, the rules of the day were explained to all.

Because of the eminent World Cup, we competed in teams of different countries i.e. South Africa, Spain and Brazil etcetera. All four categories; Wine Blending, Grape Stomping, Grape Picking and Goal Kicking were put on a board with room to post all results as they came in.

Team Spain’s first task was to blend a Cabernet and a Merlot into an “easy drinking” wine. Needless to stay, with all the wine drinkers in the team we had to keep “spares” of our testing bottles in case we finished it all tasting and had none left to fill our sample bottle. We thought we did quite well on this task and as water, juice and wine was provided for the “athletes”, we subsequently departed the blending area to make use of some of the products on offer whilst waiting to move on to the next leg of the competition.

This was totally ridiculous! We had four ladies and two big strong guys in our team – maybe our guys were too big and strong because we could only fit the two of them into our stomping bin which left no room for us. Needless to say, this turned out to be a bit of a handicap because the six, small in stature, South African ladies, “out-stomped” us by producing 30litres of juice in ten minutes compared to our 24litres! They obviously won this challenge hands down and we ended up being somewhere in the middle with the other teams except for the team with 16litres. After trying to wash grape juice off our feet, hands and faces, we partook in some refreshments again and had a look at the standings on the scoreboard. Unfortunately, we saw the 139kg of grapes that Brazil picked and felt a bit intimidated.

For our next challenge we faced off against the South Africans again and after the terrible loss in the stomping bin, we were not going to let these six ladies beat us at picking grapes. The guys were determined that no all ladies’ team will beat them this time. The tractor took us to the drop off point and after telling us where to start and handing each of us a pair of (really blunt, in my opinion) secateurs, we were off! I came to strongly dislike the sound of the vuvusela at the start and at the finish of each challenge! Ten minutes felt like hours in the hot sun, bent over the vines and cutting bunches of grapes off the vines with a pair of blunt scissors! At last the vuvusela bleated out the end of out challenge and we picked up our baskets and trudged back to the road – weary and dirty. Ice cold water and ice were on offer and we miraculously revived as soon as the cellars came into view. We immediately raced to the scoreboard and were thrilled to see that we were not last. Our 122kg of grapes picked in ten minutes put us in second place! Oh, and yes, we did beat the ladies! It is amazing how competitive we have become since arriving – the smell of victory was in the air and we were going for it!

Our last challenge of the day was to see how many goals we could score in seven minutes. Team Brazil was the team to beat with 53 goals and we fortified ourselves with some ice cold wine and yes there the vuvusela goes again! We managed to get some sort of a rhythm going with advice given by the guys and ignored because there was no time for kicking tips this late in the game. We managed to score 45 goals in our seven minutes, mostly due to the prowess of the ladies and retired to our table for some much needed rest after our busy morning.

In keeping with the World Cup theme, we were served Italian snacks and the Wine Tasting Panel went off to deliberate and taste our blends from earlier in the day. So far, Brazil was first and us, Spain, second and the ladies of South Africa third. We were discussing the wine blending skills of the other teams and enjoyed our snacks. While waiting, we drank some more of Napier’s great wine and two of our team members even went upstairs for a wine tasting.

After deliberating for about an hour, the Tasting Panel returned their verdict and South Africa won the blending challenge with Italy in second place. The final scores were calculated and Spain (us) came in third, with Brazil taking second and the South African ladies declared overall winners. Their prizes consisted of some of Napier Winery products, their blend bottled by Napier, and their names added to the label.

All the teams were happy with their performances on the day and different parts of the competition were discussed over a typical South African braai – concluding the World Cup theme of the day.

At our table, we all agreed that the Napier Winery Harvest Day 2010 was one of the best we have attended – from the theme, the food, the way the whole competition structure was planned, all the attention to detail and when we left, we each received a Gift Box with Napier Wine and – yes, wait for it – the dreaded vuvusela!

Well done Napier Winery!

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